Monday, June 16, 2008

Article #3 from Volume 1, Issue 4: Your Media, Your Human Right

"Not Without Dignity"
by Jacob Galfano

In a nation with a history of commercializing its justice system, it should surprise nobody that one of America’s newer social norms is privatized inmate labor. Over the past few decades, more industries in the private sector are benefiting from inmate labor programs.

In November 2007, voters in Washington State continued the trend, overwhelmingly approving a constitutional amendment that allows its inmate labor programs to be contracted to private companies that “operate in a correctional facility.”

The vote – shunned by local mainstream media – reflects the intersection of mob mentality and state complicity, where free enterprise continues to rule. The initiative’s supporters and op­ponents appear to fall on either side of an argument focused on the economy, and together conclude that “offenders should work to reduce their burden on taxpayers by paying room and board, crime victim’s compensa­tion, court costs and… child support,” but that “should not be to the detriment of law-abiding citizens competing for jobs or local businesses competing in the marketplace.”

Although narrow, this dichotomy reveals the broader challenge of policy change, in which innumer­able stakeholders are affected – which includes prisoners them­selves. Statistics show that some prison labor programs reduce recidivism (the rate at which prisoners return to prison after their release), and prisoners prefer to work than to not.

Frank Hinojosa spent 10 years in the federal prison system, and credits the opportunity to train as an electrician for his rehabilita­tion: “They asked me to clean tables, and I refused. I knew I did not ever want to go back there, so I promised myself to learn a trade. I started studying, and saw the potential in getting certified. It was an accomplishment; now I have a career.”

University of Washington Professor of Law Steve Calandrillo agrees: “I think it’s important that sanctions attempt to deter so­cially undesirable actions and rehabilitate offenders to the extent possible. We need to ensure that we provide opportunities like job training in order to allow for their reintegration into society. Otherwise we risk further alienating individuals and increasing the chance of recidivism.”

But is there a difference between consent to predetermined choices and empowerment? How many stories like Frank’s really exist?

A growing restorative justice movement suggests that treating human beings as human capital is dangerously disenfranchising, especially when most of those involved in inmate labor programs have no hope for rehabilitation. Paul Wright of Prison Legal News elaborates: “In our reporting, we find it a lie that labor pro­grams are concerned with rehabilitation. The reality is that all of the work programs are in medium to maximum security prisons, where many of the inmates participating in them are already serv­ing life terms.”

“But restorative justice as a movement has little traction if the defendant is convicted for a drug or other public-order offense for which the ‘victim’ is the state. What is there to restore?”
Perhaps redefining what it means to be a victim is necessary for the movement to overcome the daunting challenge of find­ing its niche within a criminal justice system reinforced by centuries of retributive law and litigation. But it works collaboratively, and uses non-conventional tools like theatre, dancing, literature, and dialog to counter the ubiquitous prison policy of suppressing voice and creativity.

In Seattle, Pat Graney’s Keeping the Faith project helps incarcerated women and girls reclaim their identities. “This is one of the first major accom­plishments in my life. This program takes a bunch of convicts and allows us to be productive, socially accepted figures of pride,” said one partici­pant on the program’s website.

There are statistics here, as well. New York’s Juvenile Justice Initiative has resulted in fewer than 35% of its youths being rear­rested or violating their probation. Montgomery, Alabama’s com­munity-based centers for youth offenders have led to recidivism rates under 10% and zero suicides – both enormous reductions.

However, in the United States, one in one-hundred people are in prison – an unprecedented ratio.

As the restorative justice movement grows, it will continue to encounter skepticism and political barriers. But it is resilient, and has the support of scores of human rights activists, legislators, elected officials, and scholars.

Social scientist Dr. Philip Zimbardo writes, “Prisons are places that demean humanity, destroy the nobility of human nature, and bring out the worst in social relations among people.” He might agree that by providing more alternatives to those incarcerated and empowering them to choose, Washington State can send the message that no human being is without dignity.

For the complete interview with Frank Hinojosa, visit our web­site: http://students.washington.edu/j4hr
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Article #2 from Volume 1, Issue 4: Your Media, Your Human Right

“Reconciliation as Grassroots Justice”
Rachel Proefke

Between April and July of 1994, in the span of 100 days, an estimated one million Tutsis and moderate Hutus were butchered throughout Rwanda as the rest of the world watched passively. The brutal genocide was orchestrated by the use of the propagandist radio station Radio Mille Collines; instigated in the shadows by the government; and enflamed by an inauspicious plan crash blamed on Tutsis which killed Rwanda’s President.

Most of the killings were perpetrated by civilians against unarmed civilians in vicious attacks of neighbors and community members acting out murder and destruction on a largely innocent minority and their supporters. This event is significant for the sheer efficiency and magnitude by which so many lives were extinguished.

Also, its significance is manifested in the fact that this was not the first outbreak of violence between Tutsis and Hutus, but rather one of the more glaring instances in a greater history of ethnicized tension in both Rwanda and Burundi where both sides are guilty of transgressions.

In the aftermath of the genocide, while the rest of the world wrestles with its complicit inaction, Rwandans are left with the questions of justice, truth, memory, and reconciliation.
Grappling with more than 120,000 alleged genocidaires placed in Rwanda’s prisons and communal jails by 2000, and despite the instituting of the International Criminal Tribunal of Rwanda, reconciliation and justice have been sought by other means.

Human Rights Watch conceded that the combination of the national courts and the ICTR managed to try 10,000 suspects in a decade, but at this rate it is projected that it would take upwards of 100 years to prosecute all the suspects. In a throwback to traditional community and tribal justice systems, a means to deal with Rwanda’s wounds has been presented in the form of the Gacaca court system.

According to the official Rwandan government website of the National Service of Gacaca Jurisdictions, the Gacaca courts system is the manifestation of endeavors to reconstruct what happened during the genocide, speed up the legal proceedings by using as many courts as possible, and promote reconciliation of all Rwandans to build their unity.

Traditionally, Gacaca courts were community assemblies presided by elders which would settle village and family disputes.

However, in their modern manifestation, these grass-roots courts, as their name implies, are overseen by individuals with judicial training and act as a forum for the community to discuss the local context of the genocide and prosecute local offenders on four categories of criminality- organizational capacity in the genocide, perpetrators of homicide, committing acts of serious bodily injury, and property damage.

There are no lawyers present at the trials; instead, community members are welcome to comment or intervene as they see fit on either the side of or against the defendant. While instituted primarily to speed up the process of justice within the small, mountainous African nation, instead the courts have been attested as the primary agents for reconciliation, truth, and memory at the local level.

This complements the community-based nature of the genocide itself where neighbors are the perpetrators and where communities must conceive of a means to negotiate their relationships.

The Gacaca courts are often touted as the most sweeping implementation of the ideological assumptions behind the necessity of truth and reconciliation. However, they are often criticized as well for potential biases, inefficiencies, needlessly exposing witnesses and victims to reprisal, and inadequacies of coping with such a complex historical and socio-political context larger than the locality.

Others in turn retort with the notion that these faults are the “occupational hazards” of truth and reconciliation as opposed to conventional retributive justice systems. The question remains how is justice to be conceived of and achieved in the context of such widespread brutality? What is the function of locality in reconciliation following crimes against humanity? And how do we repatriate a sense of community and peace after such broad transgressions?

Despite the persistence of these subjectively-oriented questions, at the very least, the Gacaca courts are occupying the gaps in accountability, speed, and resolution that international justice following the genocide has left gaping. They can be conceived of as healing the wounds that complicit international passivity allowed to be inflicted. Perhaps the best way to secure justice for community-based and widespread crimes is through respect for this locality, as opposed to through the very mechanisms of justice and protection which failed to resolve the issue before over one million civilians were brutally butchered.
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Article #1 from Volume 1, Issue 4: Your Media, Your Human Right


“Tibetan Buddhists Struggle for Justice”
Janice Goh

The Three Jewels, The Buddha, the Teachings, and the Spiritual Community, of Tibetan Buddhism govern the religious community of Tibetans.
Honoring the Three Jewels, the Dalai Lama composed a prayer for the people of Tibet in 1960, praying for freedom of Tibet, praying for ‘the pious people,’ praying for the spread of universal friendship and love, praying for justice. Justice, defined as the quality of being impartial and fair or simply the quality of conforming to law, has been stripped from the people of Tibet since China’s invasion in 1959.

Although China has established the Law of Regional Ethnic Autonomy in Tibet, the implementation of the law is inconsistent with its intended agenda.
The reality in Tibet reveals a suppression of religious freedom and practices that undermines the legitimacy of the law.

Since Chairman Mao ZeDong and his Red Army invaded Tibet in 1950, Tibetans have suffered from religious suppression. Not only was this part of Mao’s Cultural Revolution that prohibited subscribing to religious ideologies, it was also his agenda to assert political control and avoid political competition from the Dalai Lama.

Prior to the Chinese invasion of Tibet, Tibet had a longstanding history of a system of government known as chos srid gnyi ldan, a combined religious and secular system under the rule of the Dalai Lama. This system had been in place since 635 AD where the Dalai Lama was seen as cho rgyal, a political leader and earthly manifestation of the Buddha of Compassion, Chenrezig.

In 1984, China promulgated the law on regional ethnic autonomy that states that Tibetans have the right to inherit and develop traditional culture as well as practice religious beliefs.
However, paralleling the economic growth in the region has been stifling social and cultural development, especially in terms of religion.

This was spearheaded by the exile of the Dalai Lama in 1959. Coupled with the exile of His Holiness the Dalai Lama, 95% of the monasteries and temples in Tibet were destroyed, books were burned, and Buddhists were thrown in jail for practicing their religion. In addition, the Chinese government abolished the traditional practice of reincarnating the Panchen Lama, the second most spiritual figure in Tibet after the Dalai Lama.

When the previous Panchen Lama passed away in 1989, the Chinese government disregarded the Llhasa government’s election of the reincarnation the Panchan Lama. Rather, they elected a Panchen Lama of their choice that is now educated in Beijing, instead of receiving a traditional Buddhist education. This exemplifies a deliberate attempt to control and suppress the religious culture of the Tibetans that the international community of Tibetans and Tibet Government in Exile deem as unfair, unconstitutional, and unjust.

Today, the suppression of religion is furthered by restrictions on the freedom to become a monk in Tibet. The Chinese government places limits on the number of people who may become monks not only to limit the spread of faith but also to relieve the state’s financial burden as lamas enjoy state subsidies for food. Even if people become monks, Tibetan monks do not have the freedom to preach; Tibetan monks have rules on giving public lectures on Buddhist philosophy. If there are more than 100 people, permission must come from the commune, if there are over 500 people, permission must come from county authorities, if the audience is over 1000, permission must come from provincial authorities.

Even on an individual level, there are restrictions on religious practices and freedom. Although government officials maintain that it is legal to possess or display pictures of the Dalai Lama, authorities view possession of such photos as evidence of separatist charges. Therefore, it is taboo to circulate posters or propaganda related to the Dalai Lama or to even display of photographs of him.


There also exists a ban on including religion in the teaching syllabus as well as a ban on displaying religious shrines in the household. This has been implemented on the basis of fearing that this will foster linkages between Tibetans and the exiles.

In 2001, Hu Jintao, President of China, arrived in Lhasa, delivering a speech that boasted of the rights of the people in Tibet.

“Today, people of all ethnic groups in Tibet are fully enjoying political, economic, cultural and other rights, and have complete control of their destiny.”

Contrary to Hu Jintao’s claim, the people in Tibet are deprived religious rights as postulated in the Law on Regional Ethnic Autonomy in Tibet. Justice has not been served since the invasion of the Chinese government and will not be until there is consistency between the promulgation and implementation of the law. Until then, Tibetans will continue to pray for freedom, pray for posterity, and pray for justice.
Posted by UWJHR at 3:30 PM | 1 comments  
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Spotlight on...



Poet and Fort Lewis-stationed war veteran, Brian Turner spoke on KUOW Presents. Here is the transcript of the interview we had with him.


How do you define Justice?


I don’t think I can adequately answer this question. I would suggest that people look to Socrates and consider his method in defining the word justice.


How does your definition relate to your experience in the army?


BT: What is happening in Guantanamo diminishes the American judicial system. Extraordinary rendition diminishes the same system. Abu Ghraib has become a synonym for torture, rather than a symbol for justice a democracy might bring.


In your poem, “At Lowe’s Home Improvement Center”, you write about the war in Iraq and how, here in the US, it seems to exist in time, but not in space. What does this mean for your audience and its relationship to the war?


In At Lowe’s Home Improvement Center*, I’m trying to connect the war in Iraq with those of us living here in the States, to bridge these two spatial divides by melding them together. It’s an attempt at the surreal.


It’s also my way of saying--If we don’t feel the Iraqi and American dead among us, if we don’t experience some of the pain of a war we are participants in (as a nation of collective individuals), if we don’t have a sense of the suffering and struggle that is taking place, if we don’t sense even the foundation stones of war, what does that say about us as human beings? What does it say about us as a culture, and as a nation within a much larger community of nations?


In general, what can art do for a society like ours (in the U.S.)? What can it do now -- with both domestic and foreign human rights abuses (e.g. poverty, war) on the minds of its citizens? What can it do for policymakers and elected officials?


I’m hoping that art might not only entertain, but that it might, on a more fundamental level, work within the Socratic method, offering us questions which we must answer for ourselves, each in our own way.


* To listen to At Lowe’s Home Improvement Center, visit:
http://www.kuow.org/defaultProgram.asp?ID=14325

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Friday, June 13, 2008

Article #5 from Volume 1, Issue 3: Your Media, Your Human Right


“Media Control in China”
Nari Corley-Wheeler

To mitigate international concern surrounding tightly controlled media policies, the Chinese Communist Party has pledged to loosen their iron grip on their state-run news publications before the 2008 Beijing Olympics.

However, in order to loosen their grip, they must tighten their reins. Recently, local and national journalists have faced mounting charges for ‘spreading rumors’ or violating codes of ‘news discipline.’

Journalists reporting on local and national issues are restricted from reporting news that is inconsistent with the ideologies of the Communist Party. Ironically though, recent intensified ‘crackdowns’ on local journalists has only resulted in an increase reporting on media rights by international publications.

Presently, journalists are barred from reporting against Communist propaganda, leaders, and internal healthcare violations. Sources divulging evidence of anti-foreign teachings, food safety scares, or the environmental crises, are generally discredited and punishable by the Communist Party.

State-run news publications are not taken lightly in China. Journalists forced to quit their jobs report that the news media encourages and endorses fabricated stories that are in line with the party’s political interests and strategies instead of real events.

Acting as the primary media division and authorized by the Communist Party, the Central Propaganda Department (CPD) is the branch of governance that remains immensely indispensable to the government as it actively enforces media controls and censorship. As a de facto arm of the Communist Party of China, the CPD covertly and discriminately evaluates publications for reporting inconsistent with the ideals put forth by the Communist Party.

Prior to releasing newspapers, the CPD ensures that the papers carry the undertone consistent with Communist Party ideology, a sound representation of major political figures, and peaceful foreign engagements.

Asserting propaganda messages to the global landscape proves interesting when contrasted by human rights violation reports by international publications. Slight human rights violations that appear sporadically in international newspapers depict a vastly different Chinese landscape than the one revealed in Chinese state-run newspapers.

However, when human rights violations occur in mining towns, textile factories, or rural villages, readers cannot depend on the Chinese newspapers to cover topics regarding their falling standards of healthcare and their deep-seated inability to provide appropriate standards of living that the Communist ideology claims to insist upon for their citizens.

Displacing basic human rights for a strong and mobile economy, the Communist Party has little option to reveal their emerging environmental crises that afflicts the health of 1.2 billion individuals residing within their closed-media borders.

Further demonstrating their stronghold on the media, the Communist Party has engaged in another way to broaden media censorship – through the internet. In late August of 2007, the government enacted the search engines Google China and China Yahoo to remove ‘illegal and unhealthy content’ within a week of the announcement (Human Rights Watch).

Fearing embarrassment encouraged by internet bloggers and news sites, the government would rather censor and reduce media transparency rather than to admit to their faults.

Unfortunately, efforts to curtail media transparency will become increasingly difficult in an ever-globalizing world. Attempts to avert attention from inaccurate news reporting and methods of human rights violations to combat efforts to expose media truths will become paramount as China is socialized into international norms and regulations.

With the imminent arrival of the 2008 Beijing Olympics, China will especially have to make grand alterations to their internal reality for the global audience.

Journalists from around the world will be closely observing the media climate in China and will return reporting an image of China that may be uncomfortably familiar to the Communist Party, but unfamiliar to the international community.

Posted by UWJHR at 10:12 AM | 0 comments  
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Article #4 from Volume 1, Issue 3: Your Media, Your Human Right

“Media Repression in Myanmar”
Janice Goh

“Whoever controls the media, controls the mind.”
-- Jim Morisson

The year 1962 heralded the end of democracy for Burma. That year also birthed the military coup that marked the ascension of the military junta.

Since 1962, freedom of media has ceased to exist in Burma. According to the Reporters without Borders press freedom ranking, Burma is ranked among the bottom ten countries in the world. Despite international pressures to liberalize the media, the military junta relentlessly monitors and monopolizes the media with an iron grip.

Print and broadcast media are filtered to exclude criticism of the government and social oppression while on the other hand, including religious ritual activities of generals and progress of policy implementation.

As a result of draconian media control, the people of Burma suffer from a lack of privacy, a lack of security and a lack of freedom. Public access to information is tightly restricted. Not only is the internet vigilantly censored, internet cafes are required to install a screen-shot system that automatically takes screen shots of computers every five minutes.

This is done to prevent or ensure that users do not surf political or banned sites. Currently, local Burmese are only allowed to surf Burmese sites and receive e-mails that end with .mm (Myanmar); Google’s Gmail service is not allowed in Burma as the Military Intelligence finds it hard to monitor and regulate. Even telephone conversations are not spared; Burmese civilians are paid by the military to tap phone line, eavesdrop and identify ‘international informers.’

Coupled with the dire access to global information of the Burmese, the absence of independent media allows the junta to mask human rights violations. In addition, writers and journalists that express the slightest discontent with the junta face imprisonment or are banned from writing.

Today, Burma is ranked the 6th most repressive place for journalists, according to the Committee for Protecting Journalists.

Journalists are strictly prohibited to report on Aung San Suu Kyi, debates about government policies, the National League for Democracy and news that negatively reflects the junta. U Win Tin, the 77-year-old former editor of Burma’s Hantawathi newspaper and Burma’s most famous journalist, has been imprisoned for the past 18 years on the basis of different charges, such as promoting ‘anti-government propaganda’ and for supporting Aung San Suu Kyi’s pro-democracy cause.

As of October 12 2007, 11 reporters have been arrested and labeled as ‘liars trying to destroy the nation’ after reporting about the recent pro-democracy movement.

The military junta has definitely managed to suppress the local media by state control and censorship. At the expense of the government’s censorship, the people are deprived access to information and communication. At the expense of the government’s dictatorship, the journalists suffer in silence.

Until the military junta decides to step down or release its iron grip on the media, the Burmese population will be denied access to a free independent media and the imprisoned journalists who stand true to their convictions will remain victims of a media terror.
Posted by UWJHR at 10:04 AM | 0 comments  
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Article #3 from Volume 1, Issue 3: Your Media, Your Human Right


“Community Radio: Pluralism in Media”
Jacob Galfano

“Let’s be clear,” says Jacqui Brown Miller, board member and president of the South Puget Sound Chapter of the Alliance for Democracy. “Radio, television, newspapers… media is supposed to be the fourth estate of democracy. It should inform the citizenry, so they can participate and challenge the system. But it is not doing that job, not engaging the people.”

Although Miller participates in media in a very specialized way, her sincerity and desire to create change are manifest in both word and action and illustrate that policy is not shaped just by the rich and powerful.

She leads a coalition of activists who are applying for a non-commercial educational (NCE) full-power radio broadcast license.

In 2006, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) announced that it would open a window during which community organizations could be considered for space on the spectrum.

That time is now.

Community radio encompasses an increasingly integrated movement consisting of both low-power (LPFM) and full-power stations and non-governmental organizations (NGO) at local, state, and national levels that deliberate and mobilize around media policy and legislation.

Its scale is far-reaching, as ‘membership’ might include FCC commissioners, national and state elected officials, non-profit employees, and on down to the volunteer who answers the phone during your local station’s pledge drive.

This participatory phenomenon is known as pluralism, which provides an alternative to elite theory. According to scholars Theodoulou and Kofinis, pluralism “assumes that a democratic governing system can operate even in light of an unquestionable inequality of resources between classes. [It] suggests that politics and policy are the consequence of the interaction and conflict among groups… [and] that all individuals posses the opportunity and ability to organize and collectively influence the political a policy process.”

Miller and Alliance for Democracy are hoping to receive a frequency to be allocated by the FCC after the current window closes.

She hopes the station can provide service to audiences marginalized by corporate radio and has been careful to include these voices in the application process.

“We want worthwhile and diverse outreach, and have sought out Native American, Latino, environmental, and labor representation [among others].”

This is an important element of pluralism, especially when it comes at a time when minorities are underrepresented within and across mainstream media. According to the American Society of Newspaper Editors, minorities comprise just 11% of professional journalists. This inequity is compounded when considering that minorities own just 8% of full-power radio stations, according to the StopBigMedia.Com Coalition. Miller realizes being awarded the license will not be easy.

It is a long, arduous process, and her group must anticipate and prepare for several logistical requirements. According to Prometheus Radio – a national community radio NGO – NCE license applicants must be aware: “Unlike with low power FM, you must submit an engineering exhibit proving that your proposed station will cause no interference to existing radio stations.”

As the radio industry moves toward incorporating digital signals into bandwidth, the capacity for interference with other signals emerges as a problem. Jonathan Lawson, Executive Director of Seattle’s Reclaim the Media and co-organizer of the Northwest Community Radio Network elaborates: “The FCC has decided that U.S. digital radio will use a new system which makes a station’s signal ‘wider’ within its designated channel.

This has [a] negative effect from the point of view of people who believe that analog FM radio is likely to remain an important resource for grassroots media in the U.S. because wider transmissions are more likely to bleed into adjacent channels that would otherwise be available for other stations, especially including LPFMs.”

Whether or not Miller and Alliance for Democracy are awarded a frequency, their actions demonstrate that – as posited by scholars MacRae and Wilde – “informed citizens can be their own policy analysts.”
Posted by UWJHR at 9:51 AM | 0 comments  
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